A Scholar Among the Roman Clergy
Novatian was born around 200. Where, and to whom, no one knows. He first appears as a member of the church at Rome, and nearly everything we know of his early life comes from the most hostile source possible: a letter his rival Cornelius wrote to Bishop Fabius of Antioch after their split, preserved by Eusebius.
Cornelius says Novatian came to faith while afflicted by an evil spirit and gravely ill, was baptized by having water poured over him as he lay in bed expecting to die, and never afterward received the bishop's laying on of hands. Even so, Cornelius complains, Bishop Fabian ordained him a presbyter over the objections of the clergy. The story is meant to discredit him. It also shows that in third-century Rome a convert was baptized after professing faith, and that pouring on a sickbed was an exception that many thought doubtful.
From the Greek klinē, a bed. Baptism by pouring given to a sick person thought to be dying. Immersion was the ordinary practice, and many in the third century questioned whether bedside pouring was enough. Cyprian of Carthage defended it.
Whatever his beginnings, Novatian became the leading theologian of the Roman church and one of the first to write theology at length in Latin. Besides On the Trinity, three short works survive that most scholars accept as his: On Jewish Foods, which teaches that Christians are free from the food laws of Moses; On the Shows, which warns believers away from the theater and the games; and On the Good of Chastity.
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